For several weeks, there was a family of wild turkeys living in my neighborhood, and then suddenly, they disappeared.

My thought is, they realized Thanksgiving is coming soon, so they flew the coop.

Of course, turkeys don’t usually fly, so it’s more likely they hoofed it to greener pastures.

Then again, turkeys don’t have hoofs; they have feet. So clearly, they either just walked away, or hitchhiked to a friendlier location. However, since you need thumbs to hitchhike, and turkeys don’t have thumbs, that’s not a likely scenario either.

So probably they didn’t fly, hoof it, walk or hitchhike anywhere.

Probably, someone just ate them.

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And therein lies the problem with being a turkey.

Of course, I feel bad about this… although not so bad that I’m willing to become a vegetarian. But seeing the turkeys in my neighborhood, and then NOT seeing them in my neighborhood, made me realize that Thanksgiving is, in fact, coming soon and there is a lot I have to be thankful for, including, of course, the fact that I’m not a turkey.

Lest you think I only have poultry issues, I’m also quite thankful that I’m not a dog.

Our dog sleeps on the floor and only gets to eat kibble and has to go outside to use the bathroom which is really no fun when it’s freezing cold or pouring rain, I would imagine. I like sleeping in a bed and eating sushi and pizza (not at the same time) and prefer my bathroom in the house with the door closed and hopefully some toilet paper left on the roll. Of course the dog doesn’t have to pick up the dry cleaning or do laundry or worry about money or cellulite, so maybe being a dog wouldn’t be the worst thing.

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I am also quite thankful that I’m not a bearded dragon. My son has a bearded dragon and it doesn’t do much. It seems quite content to lie on a rock under the heat lamp and then lie there some more until some crickets show up and then eat the crickets and then go back on the rock and lie there again. Although I like to lie on the beach for a week or so on vacation, get up to go to the buffet and then go lie on the beach some more, eventually I get bored. Besides, all that time in the sun would really be bad for my skin. Of course the bearded dragon doesn’t have to worry about sun damage and wrinkles and he’ll never need Botox, so maybe being a bearded dragon wouldn’t be the worst thing either.

My daughter has a pet chinchilla. It spends all of its time running on a wheel in circles. Sometimes I feel like I’m also running on a wheel in circles, but at least I don’t have to worry about somebody making a coat out of me.

We also used to have fish, but they all died and we flushed them down the toilet. Needless to say, I’m very thankful not to be a fish.

Clearly, compared with being a person, it’s not that interesting to be a pet. However, when you are a pet, you are loved unconditionally, except when you do something bad on the rug, so that’s a pretty good deal. Still, I am thankful to be able to sleep in a bed and eat pizza and have a roof over my head and a family that I love who loves me back unconditionally, as a matter of fact… except when I do something bad on the rug.

Even though I graduated college with honors, I have to admit, I’m not always the sharpest knife in the drawer. If I were, I certainly would have realized that no matter what I did, no matter when I went, there was no way, no how, that I was going to avoid the crowds shopping for holiday gifts.

Unfortunately, while I love coffee, I recently discovered that I can no longer tolerate caffeine. Maybe it has something to do with all that coffee I drank as a child, but at some point my body said, “done.”

Drip. Drip. Drip. I heard the dripping in my sleep. It wasn’t the light drip of a faucet leaking in a sink. It was the hard, splashy drip of water hitting the floor from somewhere high up above. Driiiiipppppp.

One day back when I was a teenager, I remember having the realization that if I didn’t come into possession of a pair of Gloria Vanderbuilt jeans, I would not survive the seventh grade. I had sworn to my mother that nothing would come between me and my Calvins, but no sooner did I pledge my allegiance to Mr. Klein, then the girls at school started showing up in Gloria’s dark denims.

There was never any doubt in my mind that I would always be a city girl. I worked in the television industry, which clearly made me hip and cool, and needless to say, hip, cool people do not live in the suburbs. Women who drive minivans and men with comb-overs — they live in the suburbs.